Taking root

In the first week of October, Suguru Geto resumed his duties as a Special Grade Sorcerer. Special Grade Sorcerers stood outside the conventional rankings of sorcerer strength; they were already strategic weapons.

But Suguru Geto did not care about any of that.

He cared about something else. On the first night after he resumed taking missions, the thing inside his body grew a little more.

It was not physical growth, but a subtler development. It spread through the depths of his cursed energy core, each new root touching a different part of his cursed energy and bringing back information he could not name.

That information was neither language nor images, but a more immediate form of perception, as though someone were whispering to him in the oldest language. Each syllable was a key, trying to unlock a door deep within his consciousness.

Suguru Geto had not let that door open yet.

He did not know what lay behind it, but he knew that once it opened, it would never close again.

On October 3, Suguru Geto was assigned a solo mission.

The location was a small city called Tokorozawa in Saitama Prefecture. The assignment was simple: a Grade 2 Cursed Spirit was haunting an abandoned elementary school, and three people had already gone missing. The Jujutsu Association classified it as Grade 2 and assigned Special Grade Sorcerer Suguru Geto to deal with it. For a Special Grade, a Grade 2 mission required almost no effort. It was more a matter of routine.

When Satoru Gojo found out, he did not insist on coming along-a rare occurrence.

He merely glanced at Suguru Geto, pushed up his sunglasses, said, "Don't die," and left.

Suguru Geto stood at Jujutsu High's main gate, watching Satoru Gojo's back disappear around a corner in the corridor. His feelings were complicated. Satoru Gojo no longer followed him everywhere as he had before the Zama mission. That meant Satoru Gojo was giving him space.

Space to face the thing inside his body.

Because that thing only truly "spoke" when he was alone.

The Assistant Supervisor parked outside Jujutsu High's gate. He was a young man who looked to be in his early twenties, with black-framed glasses and an expression so nervous that this might have been his first mission.

"M-Mr. Geto," he stammered, "the car is ready. We can leave whenever you like."

Suguru Geto glanced at him. "Are you new?"

"Y-yes! My name is Yamada. I passed the Assistant Supervisor qualification exam last month. This is my-this is my third mission."

"Relax." Suguru Geto opened the door and settled into the back seat. "Let's go."

The car left Jujutsu High and entered the highway to Saitama Prefecture. Suguru Geto closed his eyes and turned his awareness inward.

The thing curled quietly in the depths of his core trembled slightly when it sensed his consciousness approaching. The tremor felt like the stirring of a living creature waking up.

Suguru Geto touched it with his consciousness.

The thing responded.

Not with language, but through something more primitive and more direct: an image.

There was a mirror in the image.

Not an ordinary mirror, but an enormous one that stretched from floor to ceiling, set in a black stone frame. Its surface was a deep blue, covered in countless cracks that radiated from the center like a spiderweb, dividing it into innumerable fragments.

Each fragment reflected a scene.

Suguru Geto saw himself.

It was a version of himself he did not recognize, dressed in white and standing on a barren plain, surrounded by countless cursed spirits. His expression was calm, but his eyes-there was light in those eyes, a fractured light seeping through cracks, exactly like the thing inside his body.

Suguru Geto's eyes snapped open.

His heart was racing, so fast it felt ready to leap out of his chest. His hands were trembling, his palms slick with sweat.

"M-Mr. Geto?" Assistant Supervisor Yamada glanced at him in the rearview mirror, his voice full of concern. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," Suguru Geto said, his voice calmer than he had expected. "Keep driving."

Yamada did not dare ask anything else. He turned back and focused on driving.

Suguru Geto leaned against the seat, watching the scenery rush past outside. That image still lingered in his mind.

Was that image the future?

Or the past?

Or some kind of existence beyond time and space that I can't understand?

He did not know.

But he knew one thing: the thing inside his body was not merely the remnants of a cursed spirit. It was older than that. It was something he had never seen or heard of. And its choice of him as its host was neither coincidence nor accident, but fate.

He hated the word "fate." It meant everything was predetermined, that nothing could be changed. He had been reborn into the past precisely to prove that "fate" was bullshit. But what if the thing inside his body was itself part of that fate? What if his rebirth, his rescue of Haibara, his absorption of this cursed spirit's remnants-all of it was part of some larger plan?

Then what am I?

A pawn?

Suguru Geto took a deep breath and pushed those thoughts down.

Now was not the time to think about that. He had a mission to complete.

The abandoned elementary school in Tokorozawa stood on the outskirts of the city, surrounded by barren land. Its main building was a three-story reinforced concrete structure, most of its windows already broken. The words "Tokorozawa Municipal Second Elementary School" still remained above the main entrance, but the lettering was peeling and faded, almost illegible.

Suguru Geto stood at the school gate and released more than a dozen low-level cursed spirits, sending them inside to scan the building.

The results came back quickly.

The cursed spirit was in a classroom on the west side of the third floor. Its cursed energy fluctuations were steady, with no unusual surges, consistent with a Grade 2 Cursed Spirit. But there was something indefinably wrong with its surroundings. Too quiet, too clean, as though something were deliberately maintaining that "normality."

Suguru Geto remembered the cursed spirit in Zama.

That cursed spirit had also been able to conceal its cursed energy and disguise itself as something weaker. But the Zama cursed spirit had been Special Grade, while this one was only Grade 2. There was a world of difference between them. Even so, he raised his guard. After Zama, he would not make the mistake of underestimating an enemy again.

He entered the school building.

The corridor was dark. Only a few shafts of light entered through the broken windows, casting patches of light and shadow on the floor. Dust, the smell of mold, and an indefinable presence filled the air.

Suguru Geto climbed the stairs one step at a time.

The third-floor corridor was darker than those below.

The classroom on the west side stood at the end of the corridor, its door closed. Suguru Geto walked over and stopped in front of it. He could sense the cursed spirit just behind the door. Its cursed energy fluctuations were weak, so weak they were almost nonexistent, but the low-level cursed spirits he had released had already confirmed its location.

He took a deep breath and pushed open the door.

The sight inside made Suguru Geto's pupils contract slightly.

Not because it was frightening, but because it was beautiful?

Sunlight poured through the broken windows, casting a golden patch on the floor. Dust danced in the light like countless tiny stars. A cursed spirit floated in the very center of the classroom. Its form looked less like a cursed spirit than a painting. It resembled a mass of translucent, flowing light, its colors constantly shifting, as brilliant as a rainbow.

Suguru Geto stared at it, momentarily dazed.

In his memory, cursed spirits were ugly, twisted, nauseating creatures. But this cursed spirit was beautiful. So beautiful that it hardly seemed born of human negativity; it looked more like something that had stepped out of a lovely dream.

But Suguru Geto was not fooled.

He knew beauty could be the most dangerous disguise.

The cursed spirit moved. Its flowing light began to contract and gather, finally taking on a shape. That shape's face was blank, without features, yet Suguru Geto could feel it "looking" at him.

Not with eyes, but with its very existence.

Suguru Geto did not draw his blade.

Because the cursed spirit spoke.

Something unfiltered by language struck Suguru Geto's mind like an electric current.

"You have light too."

It was neither Japanese nor English, but something like the common root of all languages. Yet Suguru Geto understood.

"You have light too," the cursed spirit said.

Suguru Geto's hand tightened slightly.

"What are you?" he asked, his voice calm.

The cursed spirit did not answer. It simply stood there, its humanoid form of light trembling slightly. Then it did something Suguru Geto had not expected: it spread its arms, as though displaying something.

The instant it spread its arms, Suguru Geto saw its "interior." Deep within that flowing light, countless tiny, bubble-like things floated. Each bubble held a scene: children's smiling faces, a teacher's back as she wrote on a blackboard, an empty classroom after school, figures chasing each other beneath cherry trees.

Those were memories.

They were the memories of the humans it had consumed. It had consumed the missing people, but not after killing them. Before killing them, while their consciousnesses were still alive, it had drawn their memories out of their bodies and stored them inside itself.

It was not eating people.

It was collecting memories.

Suguru Geto's heart gave a sudden thump.

He had seen many cursed spirits. Over the ten years of his future, he had seen thousands upon thousands, from those without intelligence to those with intellects surpassing humans. But he had never seen a cursed spirit like this, one that did not exist to devour, to kill, or for any purpose at all. It simply existed, collected, and stored.

Why?

Suguru Geto asked that question aloud.

The cursed spirit did not answer. It merely lowered its arms, its humanoid form of light beginning to dissolve until it became a mass of flowing, multicolored light again. Then it began moving toward the window, as though trying to escape.

Suguru Geto moved.

He reached out his hand.

Cursed Spirit Manipulation.

His cursed energy poured from his palm, spreading over the cursed spirit like a net. The cursed spirit struggled once, faintly and weakly, before his cursed energy enveloped it. Compression, condensation, distortion-the cursed spirit was compressed into a black sphere that lay quietly in his palm.

A Cursed Spirit Orb.

Black and perfectly round, its surface covered in fine markings. Suguru Geto stared at the sphere, silent for a second.

Then he brought it to his mouth.

And swallowed it.

The Cursed Spirit Orb slid into his stomach, and cursed energy spread from there, merging with his core. The cursed spirit's consciousness sank into the depths of his own, becoming part of him. The memories it had stored also flowed into the sea of his consciousness.

He saw a classroom, sunlight streaming through the windows, children laughing. He saw a teacher, a young woman with glasses, writing a line on the blackboard. He saw cherry blossoms, petals drifting down from a tree and landing in a little girl's hair.

Those memories were not his.

But he could feel them: that warmth, that joy, that pure happiness, untouched by anything else.

The absorption was complete.

Suguru Geto stood in the empty classroom, sunlight falling through the broken windows onto his shoulders. He closed his eyes and felt the newly absorbed cursed spirit sleeping quietly deep within his consciousness.

He opened his eyes, turned, and walked out of the classroom.

Assistant Supervisor Yamada was waiting in the car. When he saw Suguru Geto emerge, he let out a relieved breath, the tension on his face visibly easing.

"Mr. Geto! Is the mission complete?"

"It is." Suguru Geto opened the door, settled into the back seat, and closed his eyes.

Deep within his consciousness, the Grade 2 Cursed Spirit slept quietly. And deep within his cursed energy core, the thing that resembled a shattered mirror had given a faint pulse the instant the cursed spirit was absorbed.

As though in satisfaction, as though in confirmation, as though some connection he knew nothing about was being formed.